


Born

by psocoptera



Category: Chronicles of Prydain - Lloyd Alexander
Genre: Early Work, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-09-24
Updated: 2001-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 20:44:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2039469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Cauldron-Born remember, together, what they were each seeing or thinking when they died.  They know Ellidyr is going to destroy the Cauldron, and they know there could have been another way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Born

**Author's Note:**

> My very first finished story.

They believe we are without words when in fact we are without voices.

They believe we are without mercy, but no memory is more common among us than the plea for it.

They believe we cannot die, and this last is true, for each of us was already dead before we reawoke in our black womb.

A dragonfly: red, with crinkle-veined wings, soaring against far-away blue. This is what we saw when I opened my eyes.

Some things become familiar, but always precious - /gasping for breath/, /"I love you"/, /pain/. Some things we do not understand but cherish nonetheless - what is /itch/? What is /loneliness/? What is /picking your nose/? Even the familiar is a familiar bewilderment - so many of us are born with the word "love" on our lips or in our ears. Almost as many as "mercy", as "please", as "help me".

We hear these things on the battlefield too, from the warm ones. "Please," when we ready our blades to strike. Also "no." Or "noooooo", but we think it is the same thing. Do they mind, the warm ones? Would they prefer to stay alive? We do not prefer; standing or lying, whole or severed, it is all the same and we do as we must. But the ones we meet in battle, they contort their faces. Lips go taut, their faces stretch back from their mouths - we have all seen it each a dozen times. Once, I leaned over a fallen man to give him death from my sword. Later I saw the corpse go to the Cauldron and when he opened his eyes we saw a dark face and knew it to be my own. Many of our faces are thus known to our company.

But there are other faces we have never seen save for that first sight - smooth faces, bathed in sunlight, with upturned lips and flowing hair. Why did so many of us die with these faces in our minds? Sometimes they weep, but many do not move. These pictures must have been important but the Cauldron does not leave us the reason why.

Nor can we really understand the world around us - masses of green, things that crawl and things that fly. Warm ones can hide behind rocks. Warm ones can hide under bushes. Were these things made for this purpose? Did Arawn, our great lord, make them as he made Annuvin and as he made us? But we are set to guard over Annuvin and not the wider world. Are the warm ones guards for the green world? We will never know, now.

We might have known: we might have regained all we lost in the Cauldron when we were reborn! We had one great hope. This surprises you? Do you think because we are without voices we are without prophecy? We have crossed through death itself, and you would expect us all to keep our eyes shut in the passage! There are those among us who have looked at the weave, who have traced the strands both back and forwards. They tell of a brooch knotted into the fabric of the world, that gave the wearer great sight and great wisdom. If the brooch could have been cast into the cauldron (or, some say, carried through by one being Born), it would have pulled the world through and all of life would have been restored to us. We would have been true men once more. We cannot prefer but we longed for this with all of our being, to understand why life is /loved/ and death /hated/. There would be no more Born, but what of it, if we were each complete within us? With all our memories together we do not have enough pieces to make one man's life; we know this, we have seen in the weave how many many windings turns even the shortest thread! Some have even seen *names* in the web - Arianllyn. Taliesin. Adaon. Did we have names, once? Could we have had names again?

But it is the other path for us, the shattering, and the silence. Already the proud one rides the path towards his doom. The eyes that open in the Cauldron now look at visions among the last we will ever see. Each new face, each new word, is a treasure. How many words are we missing? How many alien fragments of memory will we never link to anything we do know? We do not understand the difference between /grief/ and /contentment/ although in the last minutes of our earlier lives we have felt both. Should we feel one now? Both? We cannot do anything except what we must; Arawn will feed the Cauldron no faster or slower than he always does, and our ranks will grow no more or less than they will before the end. Would we tell him, if we could? Warn him to protect the Cauldron? We have seen his doom as well as ours; would he want to know it? But he did not give us voices, it is not our task to warn.

Many of us were Born /asking/ - "What now?" "Why?" Only recently have we learned to /ask/ for ourselves, only now, near the end, do we /wonder/ about our future. None among us, those who have seen the weave, has seen Ellidyr's face when he enters the Cauldron. He will carry the last new thing we will ever know. What will it be? /Bitterness/? /Joy/? /Glory/? Or just the blackness of the Cauldron, rising up to swallow him?


End file.
